FILE PHOTO - Commuters pass Grab transport booking service app advertisements at a train station in Singapore February 10, 2016. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo
SINGAPORE: Ride-hailing firm Grab, Uber Technologies Inc’s largest rival in South-East Asia, is likely to embark on a round of fundraising as it works to develop new offerings such as financial services, its chief executive told Reuters on Tuesday.
“I can’t specifically give a time line but I can imagine somewhere in the near future, there probably could be more money coming in. That’s probably quite likely,” Anthony Tan, group chief executive officer and co-founder of Grab, said in an interview after an event to mark the firm’s fifth anniversary.
In five years, Grab’s network has grown from 40 drivers in one country to over 930,000 across 55 cities in seven countries including Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.
The Singapore-based startup raised US$750mil (RM3.2bil) in a funding round in September, which sources said valued the firm at over US$3bil (RM12.8bil).
Grab’s current investors include Chinese peer Didi Chuxing, China Investment Corp, Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp and Vertex Ventures Holdings - a subsidiary of Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings (Pte) Ltd.
Tan also said Grab is spending less on incentives per transaction even as competition with Uber increased after the US firm exited the Chinese market last year. - Reuters
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